Sunday, January 31, 2010

It's not often that I get wrapped up in the Disney magic. But let me tell you that watching a three year old delight in "It's a Small World" is pretty magical. FairyEggs's daughter, Tink, had so much fun seeing all of the fairies and princesses that roam those grounds.

Then as we were leaving for the day, I ran across this shirt in one of the stores on Main Street.

I must say that this went straight through my hormonally charged body, like an arrow into my heart. I wanted so badly to wear it to my transfer, but alas it was only in kid size. But the message is there.

Friday, January 29, 2010

FairyEggs, Tink and I flew into California yesterday and went in for her first ultrasound today. She is on stim day seven and the doc quickly counted ten follicles that were just around eight millimeters. FairyEggs is incredibly upset about her eggs being small at this point. However, having been through it, I understand how it can take longer to stim and that an increase in meds can do a lot.

I think part of her felt like she was going to come in and be my white knight, the final key into helping me get knocked up. She always jokes, that being fertile is one things she is really good at! (This kind of pisses me off as she's an incredibly wonderful person) After my past experiences, I really don't count on anything until it happens in the world of IF because I know how things change. We talked a lot about it today as we were stuck in traffic coming home from the docs office. It's just so easy to get your hope knocked around in this process.

Please keep us in your thoughts. I'm taking her to Disneyland tomorrow, so I hopefully it will be a cheerful day. :)

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Today we received our third treadmill since November. I'm seriously crossing my fingers that this one is it, although I really could have used it before this cycle got going. The fact that it arrives the day before I leave for California is like the universe telling me I don't really need it, right? No, I really do!

But at this point I'm certainly not worrying about things like that because I hope to have a delightful little belly bump in a few months. Can you believe the hope that is spreading onto this page? It's there inside of me from my head to my painted pink toes. This just happened this afternoon with the pulling out of the suitcase and the packing of my syringes.

Since this is the third, three hundred pound machine, I have politely declined to haul it from our garage through the kitchen and into the living room. It's a paper weight on steroids that happens to bend and fold as you shuffle along with it. It's really not a pretty sight to see me helping.

Instead, my hubby has enlisted the help of his friends from class. One of the guys is this tall strapping fellow with reddish blond hair whom we've only known since October yet he and his wife are some of those instant friends you make moving from station to station in the Army. The other, is a totally earnest guy, who luckily is alone right now since his shrew of a wife is not local. We've known him for several years since he was also stationed at Fort Polk.

The most beautiful thing came from these two lovely bears of men. Separately, they both wished me the best of luck over the next couple of weeks for this cycle. What was incredibly lovely was that you could tell they meant it from the bottom of their hearts. They were both so sincere in quietly telling me this....I can only imagine how strange it is to broach that kind of subject with your friend's wife. It was simply beautiful to have this unconditional support offered up so freely from an unexpected source.

We are lucky to have so much love around us. I guess it is in the hardest of times that you see what is in the heart of the people who surround you.

If “Muffin Top” is a good thing, then I must have thousands of eggies to hand over…..Now, I had a bit of a muffin before this started, but it is OUT OF CONTROL NOW!I have been working hard for three years to get rid of the baby belly and now I am right back where I was a couple of years ago.Albeit, for a great reason.I have forced myself to stay away from the scale because I know it will be bad news.This comes off pretty quick, right?

My emotions are a different story.I feel like a train wreck.It feels a bit like post partum depression.I don’t care about anything.My house, my work, if my kids are clean or if I make everyone around me miserable.My eight year old asked me if I had taken my “grumpy medicine” today because of how I was treating everyone.I feel bad, but not bad enough to change my behavior.The only person I want to talk to is my husband or my mom or J about how crappy I feel.I have virtually ignored all of my friends and even my sister because of the apathy.I can put up the front at work and by the time I make it home I have nothing left to give anyone else.Thankfully, I have the most amazing man in the world supporting me and loving me.He keeps telling me this is temporary and will be over soon.He has only bruised me a bit, so I don’t have anything to complain about there.

Enough complaining.We are excited to go on this adventure!Disneyland, Huntington Beach and maybe Rodeo Drive in our future!I am excited about my mom coming out and staying with us and just hanging out with us.Wish us luck!We are hoping for the best possible scenario!!!By the way, I would do this all again in a heart beat for my best friend in the whole world.You are amazing!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The whole point of this journey is to grow our family. So it seems so ironic that now, right now is when we lose someone. My brother-in-law did pass away on Monday a few minutes after they removed the respirator. I'm so glad that two of his kids were there to be with him in his final moments. They are planning to do a memorial service sometime in the upcoming months when all of the family can get together. I know that there is anger and sadness amongst the family, so I hope that by that time, some of the anger will have passed. My nephew was incredibly sweet in telling me that we could wait until I was done with this cycle so I could be there, since I'm family.

Today I was thinking about the loss of my BIL in terms of our future family. Some of my favorite memories as a kid are with my aunts, uncles, and numerous cousins. Towel fights, fourth of July firecrackers, thanksgiving meals, lots of hugs and head rumples... I'm sad that my kids won't know their crazy uncle and whatever fun he would have had.

****

Our cycle is indeed continuing on schedule. FairyEggs wrote me an email the other night saying she felt like a pincushion. I laughed knowing exactly the feeling. Her first bruise came to visit on day three thanks to some handy work by her husband. I mean that in the nicest of ways since I always had several little bruises dotting my stomach! The other good news is she's feeling swollen and the muffin top is starting to come to visit! I'm hoping that this is a good sign that the drugs are in fact working. Wheee! It's torture to wait until day seven to see how the follies are doing! Torture I tell you!

Tonight I got to do my own little twist for my delestrogen shot on my right upper butt cheek since hubby was at a night class. Hehe. Apparently he is better at it that I am since I immediately spurted some vampire juice and he has yet to breech a vein. Hmmph.

In two days we'll be heading to California....then the fun will really start!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

This morning about six I got a phone call from my nephew, the one who never calls me. I figured he either made a mistake in calling me or something was wrong. When I heard his voice, I knew it was the latter.

My brother-in-law's roommate came home to find him on the floor not breathing and without a pulse. He started chest compressions and by the time the paramedics arrived, he had a thready pulse going. They admitted him to the hospital, had to intubate him and found his kidneys in failure. After later scans today, they found no brain activity. As of our last update, they still have him hooked up the machines that are keeping him alive, but his kids plan to let him go off of them soon. He's forty-four

His brother had his kids really young, so by the time I became part of the family, they were teenagers. I'm closest to A, the middle child, who is enlisted in the Air Force. While I'm glad that all of his kids are over twenty-one, my heart breaks for them because that is still way too young to lose the parent who raised you.

I've only heard my husband cry three times: when his dad passed two weeks before he came home to visit from Korea, tears of relief when his mom passed after a painful decline, and today.

The hard part today for me is that I'm mad at him. When I first met my BIL, he pretty much had it all--good kids, a steady girlfriend, a fantastic job, a house, and all of the toys you can imagine. He drove me crazy many times with his even-louder-than-my-husband's voice and constant need to argue Italian style (aka about everything)! But generally, he was always up for fun, generous, and really supportive of my husband being with me. Then by the time his kids started getting out of the house, he went through a midlife crisis. In five years, he had pretty much lost everything. The choices that caused him to lose everything are the same that put him on the floor last night. Why didn't he take better care of himself?

Although I can deal with this, please send some good thoughts towards my husband's family as they try to work through this unexpected turn of events.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Because I don't say it enough, thank you, thank you to all my bloggy friends and dear family for caring enough to send me thoughtful comments. It helps so much to have other people's perspective other than my own. Besides you save me thousands of dollars in therapy bills. Grin.

When I woke up this morning, I looked to start swimming sideways. As usual getting some sleep and distance helped, but I still felt pretty emotionally fragile. I worked through it, took the dog and the husband for a walk, and tackled some of my usual weekend grading.

I went ahead and ditched the New Years Greeting background since January is coming to a close. I visited all of my usual background getting spots looking for fairy backgrounds in celebration of my FairyEggs. Let me tell you that the fairy backgrounds? Yeah...they're a little creepy.

Thanks again from the bottom of my heart for the support and comments. Ya'll are the best. :)

Friday, January 22, 2010

I admit it. I take anti-depressants. I don't skip doses. I don't go off of them. I take them every single day. And generally, I feel like a pretty average person too.

But tonight with a single phrase from my husband, I turned to the dark side of my depression.

Not too long ago, I felt like the bottom just dropped out on my emotions. I can usually feel a difference between chemical changes and stress induced episodes. This week I felt like crap from my dear auntie F beating my body into a pulp and obviously changing my hormone levels. So because I felt like that, I didn't go walking. This of course makes me feel worse. Hence with a single comment, I slid down the slippery slope tonight when I thought I was getting better.

In the blog world I stumbled across this incredibly thoughtful woman who in her journey has helped me view myself through my partner's eyes. While our situations are vastly different, I think it's helped me think about choices I make that effect my illness like not exercising. It is a choice. I am aware of my problem and know how to manage it. So if I don't do everything I need to do, it's a choice I make in managing my illness.

It's hard for me even to think of it as an illness. It's certainly not something that most people who look at me even know about because I function. As a teacher, I am appropriate and professional. I clean my house. I bathe. I chat. I make dinner. I have friends. But that is because I have the least severe type of depressive disorder known as dysthymia. It's the undercurrent of my life that can swell into a riptide that sucks you into the middle of the ocean.

Perhaps like escaping out of the riptide, I need to swim sideways. I need to change directions and keep the tide from sweeping me out.

Depression is kind of like infertility. It's not something you talk about. It's something people expect you to be able to manage without much help. This post was actually really hard for me to write because I feel such immense guilt and self loathing about it. But if I'm going to be honest with you about my journey, these kinds of episodes are what I face whenever something gets tough.

As I have talked about in other posts, this is an incredibly blessed cycle with love coming from many many places. At the same time, I am getting very very nervous about it. I need my body to be in a relaxed, calm place so that I can be ready to get knocked up.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Since my hubby doesn't get to poke me to get pregnant, I made him poke me with my 1.5 inch needle. baw-hah-hah

Yes, I feel like a complete newbie right now. After a year of IUIs and two IVF cycles, you would think that somewhere along the way, he would have given me a shot of some type of wacky drug. No, no, no, those pesky deployments relieved him of all of past needle duties. By the time he returned home for the last cycle, I certainly didn't need his help. I was much too busy showing him what a pro I was at it.

Tonight, I had to do the upper right buttock area which I can do with a little twist, but quite frankly my whole body hurts. Whatever crappy BC pill they gave me has unleashed a monster wave of pain and headaches along with my dear AF. So, I had to coax him a bit.

He felt all relieved when he didn't have to stick me with the 18 gauge needle, but quickly grimaced when he realized the 22 gauge poker was still an inch and a half long.

"I have to stick the whole thing in?" he asked.

"Yes, dear." Grin.

So my first shot of estrogen is done. Meanwhile on the other side of the country, FairyEggs got her period so we're in sync and completely on schedule without any extra labs to do. Go us!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Today I went to organic produce heaven, aka Trader Joes. Okay, I'm sure Whole Paycheck has more, but I love my little TJ's stores. I was also able to buy bread, marinara sauce, and a plethora of other goodies without five tons of the white death (salt) in it. No, I didn't drive two hours just to go there, but it was the highlight of my day.

Today I had to run up to Saint Louis for my ancient but sturdy Volvo's leaking steering fluid thingy. The best part about waiting at the dealership is that they have a huge comfy leather couch and overstuffed chair to wait in. One nap later, I was on my way.

The cycle:

The devil drug, Lupron, is hitting FairyEggs pretty hard. She's on a higher dose of it than I was at 15 units but will be dropping down to 10 units on Saturday when she starts the stim meds.

And I must admit that my inner cheerleader is doing cartwheels with the mere thought of FairyEggs actually starting herstimulation meds. Cartwheel people. FairyEgg's Saturday's stim meds will include 275 iu Follistim and 75 of Menopur and continue until her first ultrasound at day seven. For my cycles, I was always monitored at day three, so it seems endless to wait until day seven to peek at her follies. I'm just crossing my fingers that she responds well to the meds.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is my first shot of this cycle with 0.2 cc of E2V....some sort of estrogen. The lovely part of this E2V shot is that it only happens every three days. While growing lining has never been a problem for me, it seems like other people doing FETs and such are on a lot more meds. Any thoughts?

As my parting thought for tonight, I have decided that my chance of getting pregnant has gone exponentially up since hell has frozen over and a Republican now has Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. No, I'm not including political commentary here, I just never thought that would happen! So if a Republican can get elected in Mass, maybe an infertile girl can get knocked up. It could happen!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

I have finally emerged from beyond my huge stack of virtual papers. My well of red ink is now dry, students are weeping across the country, and I sit here with a healthy dislike of commas and students who do not use the textbook as a resource. "There's a textbook for this class?" Sigh. Are you sure you want to be a teacher?

After I emerged from my grading stupor, I looked at my calendar to see what I have on my plate for this week. Blah, blah, blah. Then it dawns on me that tomorrow is my injection/medication walk through with the nurse and my first injection is Wednesday. Holy Moley Batman, the Bat-Mobile is about to leave the cave!

With FairyEggs doing her thing across the country, it just doesn't seem quite real. The poor thing posted on FB yesterday that she felt a little crazy. Eek. It's one thing to put yourself through huge amounts of crazy female hormones, but it's another to put one of your dearest friends through it!

She called me to tell me happy happy news this weekend that her insurance had paid for the majority of her pre-tests with an original bill of about $1500 knocked down to about $150. I love it when insurance actually works! It helped to soften the blow when I opened up a bill from the RE's office listing our payment due of $3900. While we have a huge discount from the RE offering his services pro bono, there are of course other costs to cover such as the anesthesiologist and the embryologist, etc. The goal is to hopefully come in under 10k for the whole cycle. When you compare this to the cost of a regular anonymous donor cycle, whew, we are so incredibly blessed to have all the help we have with this cycle.

Besides the endless grading, the great part of this weekend was Saturday. For one of my Christmas presents, hubby had bought me a Calphalon pot that we needed for our collection. It's the perfect size for our meals which is something the set we got when we got married was sorely lacking. Chili for fifty anyone? So, he's been jonesing for another one ever since. He's such a kitchen-dork! :) So Saturday morning, we headed up to do a little shopping. With our future in Alaska, I used the winter sales as an opportunity to add to closet. Shocking the crap out of me, he bought me this:

Wowzers! Go hubby! He's never bought me something completely unnecessary but wanted, so I was a little flabbergasted and giddy all at the same time. I had this huge fat grin on my face as we stood in line to purchase it. I don't even think the photo does it justice as you can't see the construction and feel of it. Love it!

After we bought the purse he took me over to an ice-cream shop, which if you remember, I've been lusting after since December! I enjoyed every bite of the strawberry ice cream mixed with fresh strawberries. Lovely.

Then when we got home, we colored.

It was such a very nice day.

So this weekend? It was such a mesh of all these random things that have left me on this Sunday night, tired but satisfied.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I just want to let you all know that FairyEggs had her first shot of Lupron yesterday. And the best part was, she took it like a champ! I was a little worried about the whole needles bit since she wouldn't even come into the kitchen when she came to visit and I was shooting up! Apparently, Mr. FE took over and stuck her. hehehe. I hear other members of the fam are also lining up for their turn at jabbing her.

It is so very strange not to be in the middle of it all. So while I sit over here eating my bonbons, FairyEggs is getting stuck with the Lupron demon. Hmmm....

I am feeling much better today after a little medicated help and some good walks with my doggie. The warm sunshine and balmy fifty-degree weather has been a nice change since our recent negative two temperatures. You know when it's colder in Missouri than in Anchorage that something is not normal!

I have virtual mounds of papers to grade (since they are all posted online), but I've been plugging away this week and will continue this weekend. Hubby's masters classes are keeping him hopping along with his papers that are due for his military training course. So I imagine this lovely MLK four day weekend will be spent attached to our laptops.

One thing that definitely brightened up my day was Nicole's news at All Grown Up. She's been such a pleasure to follow on her adoption path. I was literally doing a happy dance for her. :) There are so many hard things that we deal with in our family building, that we've got to cheer for every happy day like hers.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I have absolutely nothing to be depressed about because there are so many freaking good things in my life. But the fact of the matter is that I've been in the dumps. Can't write blogs without hating them. Can't say what I really want to. Don't really want to get out of bed.

In fact my bed calls to me the siren song of egyptian cotton and a soft sleep# setting of 35 which Sweetpea and I both go for. I want to go there pretty much 24-7 and with my feet slid under her for warmth and a book in my hand until I slip into oblivion. Because if I'm asleep I really don't have to think of much.

If I'm in oblivion I don't have to feel like a failure for not working more than I do, for not knowing when I should refuse a shipment because they turn my Nordictrack on end instead of laying it flat like instructed, for not going to exercise, for drinking my DietDrPepper with evil caffeine, for having endless cravings for mintchocolatechipicecreamwithasecondscoopofrockyroadfrombaskinrobins, for procrastinating my endless grading. . .

None of this should rationally be a reason for me to feel like I'm swimming in the failure bucket. The fact is that I'm approaching another situation where failure is reasonable and even probable. Thirty-seven percent of people in this situation at my clinic "are unsuccessful." Have you ever noticed that unsuccessful has a big FU in it? Yep, that's exactly what this would be.

While Fairyeggs might not be twenty-one, she's healthy, strong and fertile. She's had three children in the not too distant past. If I can't get knocked up with her eggs, then I have to wonder if it's more than just crappy eggs.

This has to be it. Just like fertility drugs and IVF cycles had to be it. This delusion of hope that I have is simply going to wreck me, again. I know this. I know this, and I still have hope inside of me.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Here I am again! This is real! We are going through with this! Sometimes it still feels unreal that fifteen years after meeting J that we will be going through this together. I think this makes us related now. I feel like she is my sister, so now we can just make it official!

I am excited and admittedly a little nervous. I will be taking crazy drugs (that I heard will make me a bit fat and have a mean headache) and leaving my family for ten days. I have never been away from my husband that long in the ten years we have been married. Not to mention the two other kids I will be leaving at home. Thankfully I have a great friend who will be keeping them and is hugely supportive and a WONDERFUL husband who thinks this is a great idea!

I also have to say thanks to the entire family who will be putting up with me, Tink and my mom for a very long time. Hopefully we will be the best house guests ever!!! My school has been extremely understanding and wishes everyone the best of luck. It is amazing the support I have been getting from them. I found out our assistant principal went through the exact same thing and ended up adopting a little girl. You never know who you will meet that will endure the heartache that so many of you have felt. I hope that this act will not only help a wonderful man and woman to be parents, but that everyone has hope of someone giving the gift to you, whether it is through adoption, egg donation or just support and understanding. After reading several of your blogs, I wish the same for all of you. I have a whole new perspective on infertility that I never had to think of and I am a better person for having been directly involved in the process.

Wish us luck! Does anyone think that acupuncture will help me with making good healthy sticky eggs?

Jenicini?

I use to spend my days warping young minds as a teacher. However, three IVFs and one super fabulous donor later, I found myself knocked up by another man. Now, I'm a mom staying at home with baby E, working online, and loving life in Alaska. Now, we are on the journey for baby #2 via embryo donation from IVFlygirl and her family.